What happened to the Lusitania?

0:00 Welcome to Histories Not Boring by Kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Before we begin, we have some special shout-outs. First, a massive hello to 8-year-old Beckett in Orinogo, Missouri. We know you listen every night and absolutely love shipwreck stories, so we thought today was the perfect time to dive into one of history's most famous sunken ships.

0:27 That's right!

0:28 We also have a big shout-out to 8-year-old Edward and 6-year-old Felix in Cortric, Belgium, who listen every evening.

0:37 And a huge hello to 10-year-old Hadley, her brother Fletcher, and her sister Elliot, living in Zurich, Switzerland. Thank you all so much for listening!

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0:53 So, since Beckett loves a great mystery at sea, today we are travelling back to 1915 to board one of the fastest, grandest ocean liners in the world. It was basically a floating palace.

1:08 A ship so massive people thought nothing could stop it. Like an unstoppable steel monster cutting through the waves.

1:16 But a strange warning in the newspaper, a hidden submarine, and a single torpedo were about to change the course of history. Wait, what happened to it? It's time to uncover the tragedy and the mystery of the RMS Lusitania.

1:34 Okay, Mira, so where and when exactly are we?

1:38 We are in the year 1915, during the First World War. But our story actually starts in 1906, when the British company Cunard Line launched a brand new super ship called the RMS Lusitania. How big are we talking? Bigger than a blue whale? Way bigger. The Lusitania was 787 feet long. That is as long as two and a half football fields.

2:05 Or taller than a 60-story skyscraper if you stood it on end. Whoa! And how heavy was it? It weighed over 31,000 tons. It took more than four million metal rivets just to hold the steel plates of the ship together. The workers literally hammered for years. When it was launched, it was the largest moving object in the entire world.

2:31 But you said it was the fastest too. How fast? Like a speedboat.

2:36 Well, for a giant metal palace, it was incredibly fast. It had massive steam turbine engines that were 25 feet long. The ship carried 7,000 tons of coal every single voyage.

2:52 7,000 tons of coal? That must have taken an army to shovel into the ovens.

2:57 It did. Those engines were absolute beasts, and thanks to them, the Lusitania could cruise at 25 knots, which is about 30 miles per hour. That might not sound fast for a car, but for a giant metal city on the water, it was unheard of.

3:15 So it was huge, heavy, and lightning fast. What was it like inside?

3:21 It was pure luxury. It had grand dining rooms, beautiful carved wooden staircases, and electric lights in every room. It could carry over 2,000 passengers and over 800 crew members.

3:36 Okay, so the ship sounds awesome.

3:38 What went wrong? Let's jump to May 1st, 1915, in New York City. The Lusitania was preparing to sail across the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool, England. Nearly 2,000 people were on board, packing up their trunks and getting ready for an adventure.

3:58 Wait, but you said 1915. Wasn't World War I going on right then? Was it safe?

4:04 That's the crazy part, Finn. Great Britain and Germany were at war. Germany had declared that the seas around Great Britain were a dangerous war zone. Did the passengers know that? They did! In fact, the German embassy actually paid for advertisements in 50 different American newspapers, right next to the Lusitania's sailing schedule.

4:27 Wait, the enemy put a warning ad in the newspaper. What did it say? Please don't ride this boat.

4:34 Pretty much. It warned that any British ship sailing into the war zone could be destroyed, and passengers were travelling at their own risk.

4:43 Did people cancel their tickets? I would have totally cancelled my ticket and stayed home.

4:48 A few did, but most didn't. They thought the Lusitania was far too fast for any submarine to catch. Plus, it was a civilian passenger ship, not a warship. So they just set sail anyway? Yes. Among the passengers was a 12-year-old girl from Canada named Avis Dolphin. She was travelling to England for school with two nurses.

5:12 She even became friends with a professor named Ian Holborn, who told her stories about Scotland.

5:19 I'm getting nervous for Avis.

5:21 How was the trip? For the first six days, the voyage was perfectly fine. The weather was beautiful. Avis even got over being seasick and enjoyed the journey. But then came May 7th. They were just 11 miles off the coast of Ireland. The passengers could literally see the green hills of Ireland from the deck.

5:43 11 miles? That's so close! They were almost safe. What happened? Lurking beneath the waves was a German submarine called a U-boat, specifically U-20, commanded by Captain Walter Schwieger.

6:00 Oh no.

6:01 Did they see the Lusitania? Through his periscope, Captain Schwieger spotted the massive ship. The weather had been foggy earlier, but it just cleared up, giving him a perfect view. At 2.10 in the afternoon, he ordered his crew to fire a single torpedo. Only one? Yes. The torpedo raced through the water at roughly 40 miles per hour and slammed into the right side of the Lusitania.

6:30 Boom!

6:31 Did the ship stop? The explosion ripped a giant hole in the hull, throwing a geezer of water and debris hundreds of feet into the air. Down in the dining room, 12-year-old Avis was just finishing her lunch. The ship tilted so violently that dishes crashed to the floor and people tumbled out of their chairs.

6:54 That's terrifying. Did the crew launch the lifeboats? They tried, but there was a massive problem. Just seconds after the first torpedo hit, there was a second, massive, mysterious explosion deep inside the ship.

7:10 Wait, you said the submarine only fired one torpedo. Where did the second explosion come from?

7:16 To this day, historians debate it. Some think it was cold seawater rushing in and hitting the boiling hot steam engines, causing them to detonate. Others think clouds of highly flammable coal dust in the storage bunkers ignited in a giant fireball. That is wild! What happened to Avis in all that chaos?

7:39 Her friend, Professor Holborn, rushed over, grabbed her, and strapped a lifebelt onto her. He got her into a lifeboat, but as it was being lowered, it flipped over, tossing her into the freezing ocean. No way! Did she make it? She did! Avis clung to floating wreckage until she was rescued. But because of that massive second explosion, the giant Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes.

8:07 18 minutes! The Titanic took over two and a half hours to sink. Exactly. Because it sank so incredibly fast, and the ship was leaning so far to the right side, it was almost impossible to launch the lifeboats properly. The boats on the left side swung too far inward, and the ones on the right swung too far out.

8:30 How many people were saved? Brave rescue boats rushed out from Ireland and managed to save over 760 people, pulling them from the cold water. That included Avis and Professor Holborn. But tragically, nearly 1,200 people lost their lives that day.

8:51 That is so sad. What did the rest of the world say?

8:55 The world was absolutely outraged. Sinking a civilian passenger ship without warning was against the rules of war. It caused huge protests, especially in the United States, because 128 Americans died. Did the US enter the war because of it? Not immediately, but it completely changed how Americans felt about Germany.

9:20 It was a huge turning point that eventually helped lead the United States into World War I two years later. Wow! Do you have any weird or surprising facts about this? I do. Did you know the captain of the Lusitania, William Thomas Turner, actually survived? When the ship went down, he was washed off the bridge right into the churning ocean.

9:45 But he grabbed on to a floating wooden chair and a ship's logbook and survived for three hours in the water. A floating chair, that's lucky. And here's a mystery fact. For decades, people wondered if the Lusitania was secretly carrying weapons, which might have caused that second explosion. Was it? It turns out it actually was carrying millions of bullets for rifles.

10:13 But most experts today still think the second explosion was probably the ship's massive steam boilers bursting. Alright, Finn, it is time for the quiz. Let's see how closely you were listening. Are you ready?

10:28 Okay, I'm ready. My brain is packed with facts.

10:32 First question What year did the Lusitania sink? Next one. How did the German embassy try to warn passengers in America? Question three. How fast did the Lusitania sink after being hit? Here's number four. What was the name of the 12-year-old girl who survived? Last question. Off the coast of which country did the ship sink?

11:13 Great job! Let's see how you did. Time to reveal the answers. The first answer is, it sank in the year 1915. For question 2, they put warning advertisements in the newspapers. Number 3. The answer is it sank in just 18 minutes. Question 4. The brave 12-year-old girl was Avis Dolphin. And the final answer is, it sank just 11 miles off the coast of Ireland.

11:45 I still can't believe how big and fast that ship was, or that it sank in only 18 minutes. It is terrifying but fascinating. History is wild.

11:56 It really is. It shows how one single moment, like one torpedo in the ocean, can change the entire world and redirect the course of a massive global war.

12:08 If you loved learning about the Lusitania or Avis's brave escape, please leave us a five-star review. Just scroll down and tap the stars.

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12:36 Thanks for listening, time travellers. See you next time on History's Not Boring. Bye!